novelSusiti Chapter 2 Seeking Traces in the Mortal World
Chapter 2 Seeking Traces in the Mortal World
The tides of time surge silently in the void.
Ma Yongsheng floated in the cold, silent depths of space, surrounded by constellations that have yet to be named by later astronomers.
He "gazes" at that familiar blue-white planet—Earth in 1628, a world apart from the ravaged cradle of humanity in his memory.
There are no orbiting satellites, no flashing lights of a space station, and no silver dome of a lunar base.
Only the original celestial bodies silently moved in their predetermined orbits, following the laws that Newton had not yet written down.
"I'm back." This thought rippled through the non-material consciousness.
But his return came at a fatal cost—as a pure spiritual being, Ma Yongsheng could clearly sense that he was slowly dissipating.
Without a physical carrier like the cerebral cortex as the anchor of consciousness, and without a neural network composed of billions of clones as the basis of existence, his consciousness is like a jellyfish exposed in a vacuum, evaporating every moment.
The echoes of quantum entanglement whispered deep within his consciousness:
Existence limit: 72 Earth hours. After 72 hours, the consciousness structure will completely disintegrate into meaningless fragments of information.
Seventy-two hours. Three Earth days.
He must find a physical body.
He wanted to go back.
The moment this thought arose, that distant solar system suddenly seemed a little closer.
Like adjusting the focus of a telescope, a blurry image suddenly becomes clear.
It's so clear.
Ma Yongsheng's consciousness plunged toward Earth at the speed of light.
Atmospheric friction has no effect on him—he has no physical form.
As he passed through the troposphere, he "saw" the outline of the east coast of North America.
New England in 1628.
Eight years have passed since the Mayflower landed, and the Plymouth colony has only just begun to establish itself.
Ma Yongsheng's consciousness swept across this land, sensing the life fluctuations of hundreds of European immigrants.
He tried to fit in.
The first target was the colonial governor, William Bradford.
When Ma Yongsheng's consciousness touched the mind of this Puritan leader, a strong rejection reaction nearly tore his mental structure apart.
Bradford's devout religious faith and absolute loyalty to God formed an impenetrable wall of consciousness.
Ma Yongsheng was bounced away, like a water droplet rolling across a lotus leaf.
Incompatibility: 97.3%, his consciousness automatically analyzed.
He turned to ordinary immigrants.
Farmer John Alden, carpenter Peter Brown, soldier Miles Standish… every attempt ended in failure.
The brains of these early colonists were solidified by the thought patterns of their specific era, and their neural networks lacked the "interface" needed to receive a consciousness beyond their time.
Worse still, Ma Yongsheng discovers that his consciousness is having a kind of "contamination effect" on these 17th-century humans.
When he tries to blend in, the target will suddenly experience a splitting headache and hallucinations—the frozen Europa, a cultivation tank for billions of clones, and flashes of light from a black hole network.
A young woman even began muttering in a strange language after a brief encounter: "Clone number... consciousness integration level..."
Ma Yongsheng had no choice but to retreat.
He was unsure what chain reaction would occur if these people, who should have existed in history, were destroyed.
During his journey south, he passed through the Virginia colony.
This is the site of the 1622 Indian massacre, and the tension remains.
Inside the fenced area of Jamestown, colonists patrolled vigilantly with guns.
Ma Yongsheng scanned every life here, including Native American captives and African slaves—the latter having just begun to be transported to this land in large numbers.
An African youth named Kwame caught his attention.
This young man, from the Gold Coast, has an unusually active brainwave frequency.
But when he tried to integrate, Ma Yongsheng felt a deeper level of incompatibility: Kwame's consciousness was filled with calls to the gods of his homeland, traumatic memories of forced migration, and deep fear of the future.
These intense emotional fluctuations are at odds with Ma Yongsheng's calm and collected mind, honed through his experience with the Black Hole Network.
Incompatibility: 99.1%. Merging will cause the consciousness of both parties to collapse.
Ma Yongsheng has left North America. Eight hours have passed.
The storms in the Atlantic rage on a physical level, but they pose no obstacle to the invisible consciousness.
Ma Yongsheng crossed the ocean and arrived at the west coast of Europe.
Our first stop is London.
In 1628, England was under the rule of Charles I, and the conflict between Parliament and the monarchy was becoming increasingly acute.
On the banks of the Thames, the Globe Theatre has long been destroyed by fire, and Shakespeare has been dead for twelve years, but the theatrical tradition continues.
Ma Yongsheng's consciousness swept across this 17th-century metropolis.
He "saw" the King in Whitehall Palace worrying about financial problems, "heard" the heated debates in Parliament by John Elliott and other members, and "felt" the hunger and disease spreading in the East Side slums.
He attempted to integrate himself into the academic community of Gresham College, a precursor to the Royal Society.
Thomas Gaunt was studying logarithmic tables; his mind was filled with mathematical symbols and geometric figures.
Ma Yongsheng thought that scientific thinking might be more compatible, but he was wrong.
Gaunt's consciousness was confined to the framework of Euclidean geometry and Galilean mechanics, making it impossible for him to accommodate physics concepts from hundreds of years later—quantum entanglement, spacetime curvature, and black hole networks.
When Ma Yongsheng attempted to transmit a simple equation for gravitational waves, Gunter suddenly screamed and tore up the manuscript, claiming he had seen "the devil's mathematics."
The situation in Paris is equally disappointing.
The Kingdom of France, under the rule of Louis XIII and Richelieu, was moving towards absolute monarchy.
Ma Yongsheng searched the city for hundreds of potential targets: scholars at the Sorbonne, officials in the court, artists in the Saint-Germain district, and printers on the banks of the Seine.
One of the closest attempts to success was to bring in a lawyer named Pierre de Fermat.
This amateur mathematician's mind is unusually active as he ponders a problem in number theory.
Ma Yongsheng was almost touching the core of his consciousness—but at that moment, Fermat suddenly began to write the annotation that would puzzle mathematicians for 350 years: "I am convinced that I have found a beautiful proof of this proposition, but unfortunately the space here is too small to write it down."
The inertia of history is so powerful that Ma Yongsheng realized he could not change these established trajectories.
He continued eastward.
The German region was in the fifth year of the Thirty Years' War, and the conflict between Protestants and Catholics had turned Central Europe into a living hell.
Ma Yongsheng's consciousness traveled across war-torn lands, witnessing the massacre Magdeburg was about to suffer in 1631, the atrocities committed by Wallenstein's army in Bohemia, and the desperate struggle of ordinary peasants caught between religious fanaticism and warlord plunder.
A Swedish mercenary named Hans caught his attention.
This young man had survived the Battle of Brytenfield and had developed a kind of "gap" in his brain due to the trauma.
Ma Yongsheng tried to integrate through this gap, but soon discovered that Hans's consciousness had been completely distorted by violence—every of his dreams were filled with the clash of swords and the screams of the dying. Such a spiritual world could not bear Ma Yongsheng's consciousness without collapsing.
Incompatibility: 99.8%. Danger level: Extremely high.
Ma Yongsheng quickly evacuated.
When Hans awoke, he found that he could recite the entire text of "De Rerum Natura" fluently in Latin, but he had lost the ability to sleep forever—whenever he closed his eyes, he would see the stars disappear.
Eighteen hours have passed. Time remaining: forty-six hours.
After leaving Europe, Ma Yongsheng's consciousness flew south and arrived at the African continent.
In 1628 Africa, the slave trade was expanding, but many ancient kingdoms remained independent.
Ma Yongsheng first visited the Kingdom of Congo, where King Garcia II was trying to maintain a balance between Portuguese colonists and traditional powers.
He attempted to assimilate into the Nbendu tribe of the Ndongo Kingdom.
This witch doctor named Mbamba possessed extensive spiritual practices and frequently entered altered states of consciousness through herbs and dance.
Ma Yongsheng thought this might be a breakthrough, but when he entered Mbamba's consciousness, he discovered that the other party's "psychic abilities" were essentially a form of self-hypnosis and collective suggestion, far removed from true integration with higher-dimensional consciousness.
Worse still, Mbamba's consciousness was filled with faith in the souls of his ancestors and reverence for nature spirits.
When Ma Yongsheng, an atheistic consciousness from the future (if it can still be called atheistic after going through the black hole network), tried to integrate, the belief system in Mbamba's brain launched a full-scale resistance.
The old man began to convulse violently, foaming at the mouth, and claimed, "The white ghost is going to devour my soul."
Ma Yongsheng had no choice but to retreat again.
He tried several more times along the West African coastline—to the descendants of the Mali Empire, scholars from the Songhai Empire, and artisans from the Kingdom of Benin—all to no avail.
Turning north, he arrived in Egypt under Ottoman rule.
The Cairo market was bustling with activity, and scholars at the Al-Azhar Mosque were debating theological issues.
Ma Yongsheng scanned the ancient city and found that its consciousness structure was equally difficult to integrate into.
Islam's strict monotheistic framework and belief in the absolute authority of God constitute a solid fortress at the level of consciousness.
A Sufi mystic seems to be more open-minded.
This ascetic named Haraj often sought union with God through meditation.
But when Ma Yongsheng tried to integrate, he discovered that the other party's pursuit of "unity" was to dissolve the self into divinity, while what Ma Yongsheng needed was to "inhabit" while retaining self-awareness.
The two goals are fundamentally in conflict.
The sense of purpose seeks to dissolve itself.
Integration will lead to the loss of subjectivity.
Ma Yongsheng left Africa with less than forty hours remaining.
The Central Asian steppes unfolded in his consciousness.
This was the hub of the Silk Road, where the various khanates that emerged after the disintegration of the Mongol Empire vied for power.
Ma Yongsheng arrived in the Khanate of Bukhara and saw Persian merchants, Mongol cavalry, Indian monks, and Russian envoys in the market.
He tried to integrate himself into a Nestorian missionary.
This Syrian man named Marco is learning Mongolian and plans to travel to China to preach.
His brain, with its multilingual abilities and cross-cultural adaptability, seems to be an ideal vessel.
However, the integration process encountered obstacles once again.
Marco had a strong sense of mission deep in his mind—to spread the gospel to the East.
This sense of mission forms the core of his existence, and any attempt by consciousness to alter this core will be met with instinctive resistance.
When Ma Yongsheng tried to integrate, Marco began to pray in seven languages in turn, and his brain activity became abnormal to the point of being on the verge of an epileptic seizure.
The last attempt was at the Samarkand observatory.
A descendant named Uluberg is observing the stars.
Ma Yongsheng thought that astronomers' curiosity about the universe might open the door, but their view of the universe was still a variant of the Ptolemaic system, and they could not understand concepts such as black holes and gravitational waves at all.
When Ma Yongsheng presented a simple modified formula for Kepler's law, the astronomer was horrified to find that his calculations perfectly matched his observations. He attributed this to "the devil's temptation" and personally burned his own observation records.
There are only thirty hours left.
Despair began to spread through Ma Yongsheng's consciousness.
Ma Yongsheng cast his last hope in the East—the ancient civilization that had long since vanished in his original timeline: China at the end of the Ming Dynasty.
In 1628, during the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Chongzhen had just ascended the throne and was attempting to save the empire from internal and external troubles.
Famine was already emerging in northern Shaanxi, the Later Jin dynasty was eyeing the area outside the Great Wall with predatory intent, and factional strife within the court was intensifying.
Ma Yongsheng's consciousness swept across the capital city. Inside the Forbidden City, the seventeen-year-old Chongzhen Emperor was reviewing memorials, his face bearing a worry beyond his years.
Ma Yongsheng scanned the brain of the last emperor and found that his consciousness was filled with anxiety, suspicion and a heavy sense of responsibility—a mental state that could not withstand additional mental load.
The pressure index related to goal awareness has reached a critical value.
Integration will lead to schizophrenia.
He turned to the court officials. The Grand Secretary, the Ministers of the Six Ministries, members of the Donglin Party, remnants of the eunuch faction... every political figure's mind was filled with calculation, intrigue, and a thirst for power.
These cognitive structures are incompatible with Ma Yongsheng's macroscopic perspective, honed through his experience with black hole networks.
Ma Yongsheng continued south.
The Jiangnan region was relatively prosperous and culturally vibrant.
He searched in Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou and other places, trying to integrate himself into the lives of scholars, businessmen, artists and even ordinary citizens.
An official and scholar named Xu Guangqi caught his attention.
This high-ranking official, who has converted to Catholicism, is translating Euclid's Elements, and his mind is simultaneously filled with Confucian classics, Western science, and Christian theology.
Ma Yongsheng saw the possibility of integration, but when he delved deeper, he discovered that there were irreconcilable internal contradictions in Xu Guangqi's consciousness—these contradictions made his consciousness structure unstable, and adding an external consciousness would only lead to collapse.
Completeness of goal-oriented consciousness structure: 72%. Below the minimum requirement of 85% for integration.
There are only eighteen hours left.
Ma Yongsheng's consciousness has begun to show obvious signs of decline—his "perception" has become blurred, his memory retrieval has become delayed, and his logical reasoning ability has decreased.
He expanded his search area, delving into rural villages. Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi… in the regions most severely affected by famine, people's consciousness was filled with hunger, despair, and the instinct for survival. These primal instincts were too complex to contain his intricate memories and cognitive structure.
With only twelve hours left and Ma Yongsheng almost giving up, his consciousness caught a faint signal.
A familiar resonance.
A resonance at the genetic level.
The signal came from a small village in the Huguang region.
Majia Village—the very name of the village stirred something within Ma Yongsheng's consciousness.
He quickly located the source of the signal: a farmer who was six months pregnant.
Li, 22 years old, and her husband Ma Sanbao, an ordinary farmer.
This is their first child.
Ma Yongsheng "stared" at the developing fetus inside the uterus.
Through a deep scan at the level of consciousness, he detected an incredible genetic match.
Gene compatibility: 99.97%
Mitochondrial DNA sequence match: Completely identical
Y chromosome markers: Highly similar
This fetus is his direct ancestor.
The precise loop on the timeline closes at this moment.
Ma Yongsheng realized that his search for a physical body in 1628 had ultimately led him to his ancestor.
If he successfully integrates into this fetus, he will become his own ancestor—a time paradox, but to him, who has experienced the black hole network, it is just another fold in the information structure of the universe.
More importantly, the fetus has not yet developed consciousness.
The cerebral cortex is developing, and the neural network is establishing initial connections, but self-awareness has not yet emerged.
This is a blank slate, perfectly avoiding all the resistance issues that adults would have.
However, challenges remain.
The fetus's brain was too primitive to immediately contain Ma Yongsheng's complete consciousness.
He needs to "compress" and "encapsulate" his consciousness and implant it in a latent form, gradually "decompressing" it as his brain develops.
This is like a super program from nearly a thousand years in the future that must be converted into code that can run on ancient hardware.
There are only eight hours left.
Ma Yongsheng began executing the final fusion procedure.
The fusion process requires extreme precision.
Ma Yongsheng first encapsulated his core consciousness—the essence of existence that had experienced billions of clones, the Europa base, the collapse of the sun, and the battle for the black hole network—into a "seed."
This seed contains all his memories, personality, and cognitive patterns, but it is dormant.
He then broke the seed down into hundreds of billions of information units, each so small that it could be incorporated into a single neuron.
These information units are programmed to be activated only when the fetal brain develops to a specific stage, reconstructing complete consciousness in a strict sequence.
Phase 1: Fetal stage. The seed remains completely dormant, not affecting the basic development of the fetus.
The second stage: from infancy to adolescence. Gradually activate basic cognitive modules—language ability, logical thinking, and memory storage mechanisms.
Phase Three: Adulthood. Core personality modules are activated, and memory data is gradually decompressed.
Phase Four: After the event is triggered. Full consciousness awakens, and all memories and abilities are restored.
The entire process will take twenty to thirty years. During this time, Ma Yongsheng will exist as a subconscious mind, occasionally revealing traces through intuition, dreams, or a sense of déjà vu.
He began the implantation.
Information units are scattered like stardust onto the developing brain of the fetus.
They attach to neural progenitor cells, replicate as cells divide, and distribute as neural networks are built.
This is an ingenious bioinformatics project that requires drawing upon all of Ma Yongsheng's neuroscience knowledge—knowledge that is being lost as consciousness dissipates.
Time remaining: three hours.
Implantation progress: 67%.
Ma Yongsheng felt his consciousness beginning to shatter.
Those peripheral consciousnesses that were not encapsulated in the seed—the daily perceptions of billions of clones, the operational memories of the base system, and the cosmic whispers felt in the black hole network—began to peel away and dissipate.
Time remaining: one hour.
Implantation progress: 89%.
The mother of the fetus, Ms. Li, suddenly felt a strange movement in her abdomen.
She placed her hand on her belly and was surprised to find that the fetus was unusually quiet—not deathly still, but a deep tranquility, as if it were intently listening to some unseen sound.
Time remaining: 30 minutes.
Implantation progress: 97%.
Ma Yongsheng's last fragments of consciousness began to record these final moments:
"If I succeed, I will be reborn in a new form. I will experience everything of this era—the fall of the Ming Dynasty, the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, the arrival of the Western powers, the turmoil of the 20th century, and the future I know."
"But I must be careful. Any act of prematurely revealing knowledge ahead of its time could change history, and that could have unpredictable consequences. I need to remain low-key before awakening, allowing this identity to naturally blend into this era."
"Father, if you could see... I chose to become a star, but ultimately returned to dust. Perhaps this is the truth of immortality—not to exist forever, but to constantly return within the cycle of existence."
Time remaining: 10 minutes.
Implantation progress: 99.8%.
When Li's husband, Ma Sanbao, returned from the fields, he saw his wife sitting at the door with her hand on her stomach and her eyes glazed over.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
Mrs. Li shook her head: "It's nothing. I just feel... this child will be extraordinary in the future."
Ma Sanbao laughed: "Which parent doesn't feel this way about their child?"
Time remaining: one minute.
Implantation progress: 100%.
Ma Yongsheng completed the final implantation.
His seed of consciousness has been safely embedded in every neuron of the fetus, awaiting future awakening.
And his main consciousness—the being that had experienced a cosmic adventure—began to dissipate in its final stages.
Time remaining: zero.
In the last moment before his consciousness completely faded, Ma Yongsheng "saw":
The fetus in Li's womb emitted faint light from billions of information units in its brain, like stars lighting up in a microcosm.
Ma Sanbao helped his wife into the house, and the setting sun cast long shadows of them.
Outside the village, the Yangtze River flows quietly, heading towards a future that will witness dynastic changes, wars and peace, decline and rise.
Further away, the starry sky has just begun to twinkle. One of the stars—the sun—will not be swallowed by a black hole for nearly a thousand years. That black hole will throw a consciousness back to this moment, completing the cycle of time.
Then, darkness.
Then, silence.
Ma Yongsheng, a collective consciousness that was once scattered among billions of clones, struggled in the black hole network, and flowed backward in spacetime, has temporarily, incompletely, but thoroughly disappeared.
Instead, there are hundreds of billions of dormant information units in the brain of an unborn fetus in Majia Village.
They wait.
Waiting for time to pass.
Waiting for the brain to mature.
Waiting for the triggering event to arrive.
Waiting for the consciousness that will be called "Ma Yongsheng" to rediscover what it means to "live" in this ancient era, in the most traditional way—birth, growth, and aging.
But in the deeper layers of conscious coding, a countdown has already begun:
Expected time of full awakening: 1650-1660 AD.
At that time, it will restore: 100% memory, 97% cognitive ability, and 83% neural computing ability.
Awakening conditions: Exposure to key historical events or specific knowledge stimuli.
Current status: Hibernating.
Welcome to 1628.
Outside the window, the evening breeze swept across the rice paddies, bringing with it the scents of earth and cooking smoke.
An era slowly unfolds in the twilight, and in an ordinary family in an ordinary village during this era, an extraordinary existence is quietly being conceived.
In the night sky, the Milky Way stretches across the horizon.
Some of those starlight, hundreds of years later, will become part of the black hole network, participating in a cosmic-scale battle for consciousness—and the spoils of that battle are currently sleeping in the womb of a peasant woman, awaiting rebirth.
Time has completed its cycle.
History is about to be rewritten in an unexpected way.